Recent Reviews
Book Review: Cannibal Killers
By John Marrone
Mar 9, 2006, 17:27

Written by:  Moira Martingdale
Publisher:  St. Martin Paperbacks
Pages:  256

"They brought the severed heads in first.  On golden platters.  Frozen in death, the faces of the young slave girls were still fresh and beautiful, the almond eyes lifeless.  The men's mouths watered to think how sweet and tender their flesh would be when, in just a few minnutes, it was served to them, the honoured guests." 

~ Moira Martingdale - the very first paragraph

Having a degree in Mortuary Science and being a huge fan of zombie flicks, combined with my interest in true crime stories, brought me across the single most sickest, grossest, entertaining book I have ever read:  Moira Martingdale's Cannibal Killers - A History of Impossible Murders.  Nothing can prepare you for what you will read within its cover.  I couldn't put it down from the moment I picked it up.

Cannibal Killers is a book that gives you an insight into the lives and events that led up some of the most shocking crimes in human history.  Each chapter picks apart the psychological factors of killers like Ed Gein, Albert Fish, Andrei Chikatilo, Ed Kemper, and Jeffrey Dahmer - and then looks at their crimes from a scientific point of view - detailing every cut of the knife to every about every act of violence, including the kids.  From Ed Gein's psycho-sexual mother and the furniture made of body parts to Jeffrey Dahmer drilling holes into his living captees and dripping acid into their brains in his attempt to make them sex zombies - your eyes will be like saucers, your mouth on the floor.  Its almost impossible to read it around other people, and not quote the book in an attempt to blow someone's mind.  Its THE most horrifying book I have ever read - equally facinating at the same time.

Its amazing to see how many of these killers were driven in some way to what they did.  Insane mother influences were the most common - sexual perversion was the case with some others.  Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance, had problems accepting his own homosexual desires - thus his attempt to zombify his lovers, or killing them.  Others see it as a form of power - that you can have complete power over someone's soul if you take their life and eat their body.  Some societies in ancient times, the Calatians for instance, thought it disrespectful and insensitive NOT to eat some of their parents upon their death.  And then, there is the Vampirism angle, looked at as a possible result of Porphyria - necrophilia, and necrophagia...  all the things that could attract someone to a dead body for reasons other than disposal.

Reading this book and learning of its contents - does that mean YOU youself could be a cannibal killer in the waiting - in the making?  Chikatilo's psychiatrist Aleksandr Bukhanovsky suggested that the principle reason Chikatilo became the cannibal killer of fifty-odd people was because he had been told a frightening story about cannibalism in his childhood - which is exactly what Albert Fish gave as the "reason" behind his deviant crimes.

One particular couple of pages was extremely interesting - referring to a classic study of sadistic murderers, done by Dr. Robert P. Brittain.  In it he listed many characteristics which are commonly found among such men.  Take a look at them, see how many can be applied to YOU - and then take a real deep, long look at yourself.

Some common characteristics of the sadistic murderer:

• Usually introspective and withdrawn, he has few associates and no close friends and enjoys solitary pursuits like reading or going to the cinema alone, often to see horror films.
• He feels inadequate and inferior, except in regard to his crimes, which makes him feel god-like, and is likely to offend when he has suffered a loss of self-esteem, such as loss of job, or being ridiculed by someone, especially in a sexual content.
• He can be a hypochondriac and display squeamishness.
• He has an elaborate fantasy life, imagining sadistic scenes which he acts out in his killings.  He is fascinated by atrocities and excited by cruelty, such as that committed by the Nazis, and collects books or pictures of such images.
• He has an inordinate interest in weapons, often having a large collection which he may lovingly handle, and even endow some with pet names.
• He is usually under thirty-five, unmarried and of high intelligence.
• He is usually sexually dysfunctional, has usually had little or no experience of normal sexual intercourse, and may hate all females.
• Many take jobs which satisfy their sadistic inclinations, such as butchery or slaughter-house work - in much the same way that necrophiles often obtain jobs as mortuary attendants and grave diggers.
• He has a strong, ambivalent relationship with his mother, both loving and hating her.  He often seen as a 'mother's boy' when adult.  Sometimes he commits matricide.
• Sometimes the father is excessively punitive and authoritarian.
• A history of cruely to animals is particularly significant when it relates to cats, dogs, birds and farm animals.  Stabbing or hanging is common, although worse cruelties can be inflicted.
• The method of killing his human victims is almost always strangling, which gives him a greater sense of power over his victims, playing with them 'like a cat with a mouse'.
• Although these are sexually motivated crimes, sexual intercourse or orgasm does not always occur.  Sometimes the murderer masturbates and sometimes a penis-substitute - such as a piece of wood or a knife - is used to violate the victim.
• When captured and institutionalized in hospitals or prisons, he is very well behaved, which can result in his being released or sent to a less secure unit.

How many of those qualities do you have?  I had a few too many.  Some of us around here may be on a path we least suspect.

Final analysis:  This is the best horror related piece of material I have ever absorbed.  #1 on my most recommended list.  With that said, I leave you with one final comment and an excerpt.  This book is not for the faint of heart.  It takes an all-too-real look into the minds of some of history's sickest killers, and its not pretty.  I leave you with a gut-wrenching sample. 

~  "I decided to kill my child.  After I had made up my mind, I fasted for five days.  I then took my little boy into the bush and came to the place where I had decided to kill him.  When I came to the spot, I prepared a small place for the child to sit and I spread a laptop on the ground for him, then I began to dig a grave.  After that was finished, I struck him twice on the forehead with my axe.  I then took my knife and cut him in the stomach and upward toward the chest and through the bone.  I then took his heart out.  I chopped it up and ate some of it.  I also made some cuts in my own body and mixed some of my son's blood with this.  Then I put the body in the grave.  I had brought some glue and petrol with me which I mixed with the remaining cut slices of my son's heart.  I tried to boil it but was not successful.  I had hoped that the steam and the rest of the mixture would go up to God and he would send me the power in my dreams to do the right things for my people.  The people's heads would also become clear, and they would then do the necessary things to bring about the white man's way of life.  God would send many goods to the people and we would find money.  Then I lay down in the grave and slept with my dead son.  No dream came the first night.  On the second, I dreamed that I saw a light go up to heaven.  I then covered the grave and returned to my village."

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